Taro Sugahara

Relax or Study?: A Qualitative User Study on the Usage of Mobile TV and Video

The usage of mobile TV and video devices is now spreading in Japan as well as in other countries. We conducted a user study to know when, how and why people were using the devices through qualitative interviews. In this paper, we showed one of the findings from this user study, that is, different attitudes concerning the usage of live mobile TV compared with that of mobile video on commuter buses or trains.

Relax or study? A qualitative user study on the usage of live mobile TV and mobile video

The usage of live mobile TV and mobile video devices is increasing in Japan as well as in other countries. In the summer of 2007, in the Tokyo area, we conducted a user study by means of qualitative interviews with 11 participants in order to understand when, how, and why people use such devices. In contrast to previous work, our user study compared the usage of live mobile TV with that of mobile video. In this article, our findings reveal a sharp contrast in (1) the usage of live mobile TV and mobile video on commuter buses or trains, at home, and for sharing experiences; and (2) the interest that live mobile TV users have in mobile video, and vice versa. In this article we present (1) findings that reveal the different attitudes concerning usage of live mobile TV compared with that of mobile video; and (2) hypotheses on user motivations, intentions, and desires derived from the observed attitudes.

Different Attitudes Concerning the Usage of Live Mobile TV and Mobile Video

The usage of live mobile TV and mobile video devices is increasing in Japan as well as in other countries. We conducted a user study in the summer of 2007, in the Tokyo area of Japan, with 11 participants, in order to understand through qualitative interviews when, how, and why people were using such devices. In this chapter, we present several findings from this user study, which reveals the different attitudes concerning the usage of live mobile TV compared with that of mobile video. These findings consider the following points. (1) Usage on commuter buses or trains, (2) usage at home, (3) usage related to experience sharing, and (4) interest of live mobile TV users in mobile video, and interest of mobile video users in live mobile TV. This chapter also proposes some ideas to improve user experience with mobile TV and video, and compares the results of our user study with those conducted in Finland, Korea, the USA, and the UK.

Creating and Strengthening Connections among Employees with a Blog Service

Recently companies provide social network services (SNS) for their employees for purposes of sharing knowledge and creating/strengthening connections among the employees. We investigated Hewlett-Packard Japanpsilas SNS for its employees and found that communications in the SNSpsilas blog service was not active enough. We considered that one of its major reasons as hesitation in communicating with strangers, and mediators (e.g. common friends) can lower the hesitation. Based on the idea, we propose a system that prompts users to communicate with others in the blogosphere by recommending appropriate blog articles to attach comments. The system recommends articles based on userpsilas interests and human connections among users; i.e., it recommends interesting articles for a user when mediators exist between the user and authors of the articles or comments for them.